Mirror Image
by Sumeragi Sui
Summary: In his heart, Subaru talks to his "mirror image" Hokuto-chan. Subaru birthday fic 2004.


**Mirror Image**

[Sumeragi] Sui

_Warnings: _ None. o.o; It's clean, save for the _tiniest_ hint of shounen-ai. Oh, and spoilers.

_Disclaimers: _ Sadly, neither Subaru-kun nor Hokuto-chan belongs to me. And TB, X, and Seishirou don't either. They do, however, belong to the genius team CLAMP, who you, along with everyone else [myself included], shall worship XD;

_Notes: _ I don't know how to describe this one, but… please enjoy! ^-^ In some demented way, this is an improved version of ALAH. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. ^^; More influence from the Subaru character file [not in the manga, on the drama CD?]. It could be viewed as a POV fic… it's more just a correspondence between Subaru and his sister.

_P.S.:_ Happy Birthday, Subaru-kun! [2.19.04]

* * *

_/ / k o k o r o n i ;_

_"Hokuto-chan…"_

I wonder if it's okay for me to still communicate with you through my heart. It's been years since your death, and I don't remember the precise day or month or even year. Grandmother said I should move on, forget the past, look to the future. But I had already gave up my dream, the one I told ojiisan I would never give up… I wonder if I can still communicate with animals and "old people" the same way as when I was young. I'm not sure, anyway; I'm not sure of anything anymore.

All the other Ten no Ryuu are so caring, and Nekoi-chan came by earlier and gave me a stuffed bunny as a get well present. I don't know if you know already, but… the sight in my right eye is gone. Just like… him.

I told Nekoi-chan that she shouldn't worry about me; I'm not the type of person she, or anyone else, should care about. But when I was young, I guess I worried you. I was selfless then, and I am so selfish now. I'm sorry for disappointing you.

Feeling guilt because you were the one that brought, forced, matchmaked us-- _him_ and I-- together… do you? I apologize for that too. There is no reason, none at all, for feeling guilt. It was I who had suppressed my feelings… until it was too late. And now, they're the opposite of suppressed. They have maximized, multiplied, morphed themselves until they were as gargantuan and hideously large as monsters. My feelings… they are monsters.

Throughout my life I never once called you neesan… I wonder why. After your death, I did, once… to my mirror image. For you were my mirror image, my twin… yet we were so different. Opposites. Just as my mirror image's _left_ eye is bandaged, my own _right_ eye is. That's the funny thing about mirrors, isn't it…?

Kamui-san seems most troubled by my loss of sight. Maybe because he was there, watching, when Chi no Ryuu no Kamui… or maybe because we're so alike, him and I. Yet at the same time… not alike. Just like you and me.

Had I ever, when you were alive, tell you that I loved you? Had I ever expressed the utmost gratitude I felt for your caring? If I hadn't, I apologize again.

It seems that there are so many things I must apologize for. I'm also sorry for making you sad. I know my Wish is probably something you think is futile, or bad, or something completely indescribable. But there is no way to tell you why exactly my warped mind has wished such a thing. My other wish, the one to lose sight in my right eye, has already been fulfilled. So I wait, waiting for something, waiting for him… to fulfill my Wish.

And I wonder. Does my Wish make you distressed? Do you know my Wish? Will you support me, or watch me helplessly as I work to get it fulfilled? I wonder, and I wonder so often lately I wonder if it's normal. _He smiled to himself._

Smiling. I rarely smile lately, and if I do, it's forced, unreal, unnatural, undead but not alive either. Something lacking, something I am compelled, obliged to do.

And sometimes, I even wonder if I truly am, or was, in love. Throughout the year… the year of the "bet"… I had denied everything. What had made me so mad as to be so sickly in love as this? What had made me realize that I had felt such strong feelings for him?

Sister… no, Hokuto-chan... Sometimes I wonder what _your_ Wish was. Was it to be free? Free of me? Or was it something else, another thing for me? I knew you loved me so much, but I never knew just _how_ much. And those dates you spoke of back then... who were they with? Was it with someone you truly loved, you truly were in love with? Did you wish for his happiness, or to be with him always?

And I used to wonder if you ever thought me a nuisance. But, even if it seems overly self-confident, I knew you didn't.

* * *

_ / / i t s u k a ;_

Hokuto-chan…

Did you love Seishirou? Were you fond of him? I knew you were good friends with him… but sometimes, I wonder, why did you ask him to kill you? Was it because he was the only one you knew who was willing to? Or was it because you were too afraid to kill yourself?

I'm not sure if I had fear back then. If I did, sometimes I don't think I felt it. I think I was numb to my own feelings back then, too worried about everyone else. Like an ongoing anesthetic. But someone told me once that if you take an anesthetic, you are painless for a few hours… but after it wears off, you realize that the whole time you were biting on your own flesh, or digging your own nails into your palms, and the pain comes so suddenly, a vast accumulation of it. So, was it-- is it-- better to be numb until moments before death, or face the pain your whole life and not have to deal with a buildup of it?

And do you think... that what someone says when they know they're going to die, or dying… do you think that what they say is the truth?

I guess I have to be going somewhere with these questions… Hokuto-chan… the man I loved… the man you were fond of, the man that killed you…

Your spell.

You trusted him not to invoke it… you told him what it was… you said it was pointless otherwise… you hoped he would never use it… you almost _knew_ he wouldn't, you _believed_ he wouldn't… you said he was the only one who could kill me, and I was the only one who could kill him…

For, Sister… he did invoke it…

Because of this, because of that, because of everything… now… my life… has no point, no meaning anymore.

For both of you are now gone. My dearest twin sister, Hokuto-chan… and the man whose presence I cherished, who I loved more than the whole of existence itself… Seishirou-san… both… gone. Gone from this world, this dimension. Petty, is it, to think of destroying myself in this situation? Is it petty?

Nekoi-chan-- her dog spirit, Inuki, perished. But because of her inner strength, her heart summoned another dog spirit, and her past dog has stayed in her heart.

But Seishirou… was not my dog spirit. Seishirou… cannot come back in the form of a puppy. _He looked pained and amused at the same time._

People, even if they are without content or joy, still exist if they have a goal, something to reach for, something they want that is possible in their lifetime, their short amount of existence in this world. But… I know longer have that "goal", my Wish. It is impossible now, and my only other possible Wishes are unreachable, unattainable. And thus, my existence seems hopeless, pointless now.

Sister, Hokuto-chan… Would you be angry if I began destroying myself? Or would you be glad, content, at the mere prospect of a possibility of seeing me again, or that at least I was happy? Or would you think me selfish, or childish, or juvenile, or even stupid? Idiotic?

I can no longer make a kekkai… for nothing in this world, nothing at all, is something I want to protect with my life. They have all disappeared, _you_ have all disappeared, you and him… so in a pathetic sense, one of the Ten no Ryuu has died, for I am useless without the ability to make a kekkai…

But... If you see him... _him…_ please ask… if what he said… was true.

* * *

_ / / o w a r i ;_

With once-clumsy hands, I reached into the rarely opened drawer of the mahogany desk my grandmother gave to me for my seventeenth birthday. She had offered it to me in hopes of letting me forget the traumatic events of my sixteenth year. But that was impossible. Nothing I could do could make me forget what had happened when I was sixteen.

I felt around and sensed my fingers clasping around a single, unsharpened pencil. Fumbling to sharpen it with a never-used pencil sharpener, another gift from my grandmother, I took a sharp breath and exhaled. Paper… I needed paper.

I sighed and retrieved paper from a metal rack on the side of my desk, rusting from age and moisture. I had not used, or felt, the oh-so-familiar yet strange texture of _paper_ in so long. There had been no use for "paper". It was just another useless necessity. Ah… the irony.

Slowly, I began to sketch. _Attempted_ to. I finally realized I had not drawn anything at all since I quit school.

I tried to draw the Ten no Ryuu. That caused me to crumple the paper furiously in desperate frustration as I began to make the realization that it was impossible to depict Kamui's sad, almost pathetic expressions on paper. An abrupt, insane thought swam into my brain without leave. On the new sheet of paper I materialized, I attempted drawing… Seishirou.

This time, instead of useless fury, I felt pain. Sharply, emotionally, quickly, almost in disgust. I recoiled from the sketch, but refused myself the sadistic pleasure of discarding it. Instead, I gently placed it onto one of the rack's shelves. I could not bring myself to rid of the drawing. I gradually took out another paper. My last piece.

Slow movements led me to try to achieve a sketch of myself. Hours later, I realized I had forgotten what I looked like. I had become empty, hollow. The loss of the two people I loved most in my life… became a cavity, a disease, a parasite-- eating away at my soul, forming me into an empty shell of sorts. And then, nothing.

Within hours I realized that the whole time, I had not been sketching myself; but, rather, the result instead resembled my sister… Hokuto-chan…

I gave one last sigh and began to erase all the imperfections on my crude drawing. The erasing seemed to take longer than drawing the work itself.

Eventually, I was left with a single sheet of blank paper. Only a light, lingering smudge of the pencil marks remained. It seemed ghostly, unsettling; at the same time, it gave off the aura of eerie beauty.

  
The essence… of my mirror image.


End file.
